The artist who'd painted the pictures on my bedroom wall lived opposite, the farmer who grew the bag of oranges I bought at the shop lived a few doors away and the organizer of the whole Tochni village agrotourism scheme lived just up the hill.

Welcome to village life, Cypriot style.

Tochni entrepreneur Sofronios Potamitis was a pioneer in the island's agrotourism concept.

In the past 20 years, he's converted farm buildings in several nearby villages and now rents out scores of self-catering apartments.

There's nothing pretentious or boutique about them. They look like traditional farmhouses and are simply finished with exposed limestone, terracotta tiles and pastel-painted walls.

Inside there's rustic wooden furniture and local art.

Low impact

Bed and breakfast ... if you learn the Greek word for "breakfast."

Compared with the concrete hotels along the coast, these humble but attractive places epitomize low-impact tourism.

Tourist numbers are limited to a maximum of 10% of the village population.

Most importantly for visitors, Tochni villagers haven't developed the grab-a-quick-buck style of the main Cypriot resorts.

Refreshingly, they still seem to treat tourists like personal visitors.

Old ladies in black shawls nod and say "hello" (probably the extent of their English), families show you into their homes and everyone wants to chat and find out where you're from.

Sofronios invited me for a traditional meze meal at a local bar.

It involved 12 different courses ranging from wild asparagus to lamb kebabs, each apparently produced by someone's brother-in-law, neighbor or goddaughter.

"He's married to my friend," said Sofronios between mouthfuls of wine-marinated sausage.

The enormously rotund bar owner wanted to know all about me.

To ease this exchange he produced a liter of brandy, while chewing raw artichokes.

"These are good for toilet, sex and iron," he boomed.

An old man next to him swigged grappa he kept in a petrol canister under the table and remained silent.

A chirpy villager called Andreas offered to take us olive picking the next day "just for fun."

After several lessons in banging glasses together to make the most resounding clink, someone turned up the stereo and everyone started clapping.

A farmer who looked like Stalin jumped up and performed an extraordinary dance on a flimsy chair, which ended with him almost breaking his ankle to a huge round of cheers.

Stavros gave me a lift "home" and we parted like old friends.

Authentically Cypriot

No, not more wine! A possible daytime activity.

Some visitors simply use these village houses as cheap places to stay, taking a daily 10-minute drive down to the nearest beach.

But they miss the point.

It's a misleading cliché to say you become part of village life -- half the villagers don't even speak English.

But it's easy to arrange something more authentically Cypriot than occupying a sun-bed for a week.

One morning I followed Sofronios's map to St. Minas monastery nearby.

Upstairs a grumpy old nun explained how she was painting traditional Greek Orthodox figures with 22-carat gold paint, while downstairs I sat on a bench chatting with a gaggle of old women making beeswax candles.

Those sorts of activities are free, of course, but for a few dollars extra village guests can take traditional cooking lessons, go on boat trips with local fishermen or have a family farmhouse dinner.